Holiday Feeling

During the first half of this year, along with the preparations and subsequent launch of this web-site, I was busy with the planning and delivery of various workshops (see earlier posts for some descriptions). Once the blog was launched, I posted two important openers, both connected to the principle of beginning things appropriately and well. This is fundamental in Ki cultivation.

On the practical side you will see my description of Gyoki, a movement meditation which is the foundation practice in Seiki. This is a way of emptying, and beginning again. On the more intellectual side, my presentation of the traditional overview of the whole field of medicine and healing practice, is aimed at showing where and how shiatsu and all the other Do-in practices fit into the scheme, so that we can determine our position, orient ourseves, develop our vision and move in relation to that. Then I decided to leave it – and take a break! It was late july, I needed a holiday. It seemed a bit wrong to leave my newly launched web-site unattended, but I know that stress and guilty feelings are to be recognised and transmuted; I knew it was mainly right.

Now it’s the last day of August, for many people the official holidays are more or less over. Let’s make it less! The feeling of holiday is an ingredient we can cultivate and use in our work. In healing practice, in the whole Daoyin/Do-in tradition, the essential thing is to relax. It’s an open secret conveyed both in the meaning and the practice of these subtle healing arts. We can explore this gradually, each in our own time, but the more we study and practice Eastern philosophy and medicine, the more familiar we become with Yin and Yang in experience, the more we understand the nature of the body (even studying the nervous system and hormones through the lens of modern medicine) the more we will recognise that being relaxed about life, breathing deeply and going with the flow, is the key to managing stress and acting effectively in all we do. When action springs from a relaxed (yin) state of mind, Ki (yang) flows freely. The essence of this is non-attachment.

How to create an “ambience of holiday” is an aspect of the healing art that we will return to again and again. But right now we are still at the beginning of things. P.